OPPOSE S-510. IF FDA IS GIVEN MORE POWER IT WILL BE VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO GET ASPARTAME OFF THE MARKET

FDA is responsible for so many deadly drugs being marketed and after all they receive half or more of their funds from industry. Besides the reasons below, if FDA receives more power it will be almost impossible to get aspartame off the market. Furthermore, when I was speaking to some one last year from the FDA, and said people are sick and dying all over the world from aspartame, I was told, "Well, we do need to depopulate". The answer is "you first".

Remember the raids from the FDA over dietary supplements that we are trying to save. My husband was talking to someone recently who had grown herbs like his father before him. He bought some ginseng and was fined $75,000. He was actually being followed.

The Forestry sprayed an herbalist grower's land and the area surrounding this because they knew herbs were being grown that were used in the treatment of cancer. One member of the Forestry who did this, and was dying, told the man, "I'm sorry we had to do this. The FDA does not want cancer cured. We were ordered to do this."

The late FDA toxicologist, Dr. Jacqueline Verrett, in her book "Eating may be Hazardous to your Health" (used copies available) testified against her own FDA. She said a new agency more consumer health oriented should be set up. She testified against her own FDA in Congress in 1987 having to do with aspartame, and said it still hadn't been proven safe. In fact, that's the reason they were having the Congressional hearings in the first place. It was in admitted in Congress that the FDA were receiving so many complaints on aspartame that they were referring them to the AID's Hotline! Physicians, aspartame victims and scientists spoke out against this deadly addictive excitoneurotoxic carcinogenic drug. Keep in mind that Dr. Verrett was testifying that aspartame had never been proven safe in 1987 and yet it was legally approved in 1981. It was approved through the political chicanery of Don Rumsfeld.

Notice this paragraph below: "In a misguided attempt to safeguard our food supply, S.510 grants extraordinary powers to the FDA, which already has a long history of abuse and misuse of its authority over both foods and supplements. This bill would give the FDA the authority to impose extensive, burdensome requirements on small- and medium-sized farms, ranches, and orchards such that many of them would certainly be driven out of business. Far from making our food supply safer, this bill would make it less safe. You must help us stop it!"

From my comments above you see that even with the power FDA has now what harm they inflict against farmers just trying to make a living. A citizens petition for ban of aspartame has been on their books since 2002 even though the law gives them only 180 days for them to reply. An imminent health hazard petition was amended to this citizens petition in 2007, The FDA by law only has a week or ten days to answer this. They have refused. Should they be granted more power to inflict more harm to the public by their loyalty to the pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

Remember FDA is nothing but Big Pharma's Washington Branch Office. Dr. Verrett had the right idea! Read on from the National Health Federation below my signature.

As you have heard from several other sources, the Beast is back. Congress has begun its dreaded Lame Duck session where the discredited Congressional Leadership intends to pass every anti-freedom measure they can while they still hang by their filthy claws on to power.

Among the many disturbing acts of violence Congress plans to inflict upon Americans is the so-called Food Safety Modernization Act (S.510), which is scheduled for a cloture vote on Wednesday. You have already taken steps to oppose S.510 before, but now it is really time to take action and stop this monstrosity from being passed.

In a misguided attempt to safeguard our food supply, S.510 grants extraordinary powers to the FDA, which already has a long history of abuse and misuse of its authority over both foods and supplements. This bill would give the FDA the authority to impose extensive, burdensome requirements on small- and medium-sized farms, ranches, and orchards such that many of them would certainly be driven out of business. Far from making our food supply safer, this bill would make it less safe. You must help us stop it!

In addition, even if they are not your own Senators, contact the following Senators to complain about their anti-freedom support of S.510: Orrin Hatch (UT), Tom Harkin (IA), Mike Enzi (WY), Lamar Alexander (TN), Judd Gregg (NH), John Isakson (GA), and Richard Burr (NC). These are Senators who should know better, but are supporting this bill in a misguided belief that it will actually accomplish something.

S.510 fails to address the real cause of the problem: Big Agribusiness and increasing centralization of the food supply. We need to DE-centralize, not increase centralized, Federal control.

They need to at least support the Tester-Hagan amendment, and even broaden its scope, so that small farms, ranches, and orchards will not be disproportionately impacted by burdensome rules and regulations when these food suppliers are not even the cause of any problems in the food supply.

S.510 actually supports foreign food suppliers and helps them compete against our own U.S. companies!

S.510 puts arbitrary power into the hands of the very agency (the FDA) that has proven time and again that it cannot be trusted with such powers.

You will make it your personal mission to tell everyone you know that, if they vote for S.510, these Senators voted to wreck Americas food supply and that they are personally responsible for the food problems this bill will have caused.

You support the efforts of Senator Tom Coburn to mandate spending offsets to pay for the massive increases in the FDAs $4 billion dollar budget. We need government fiscal restraint, not more increases in deficit spending.

And for all of those who signed our On-Line Petition opposing S.510, our NHF Lobbyist Lee Bechtel is hand-delivering that completed Petition to Senate Offices today.